GRETTA JOHNSON
A great physicality can occur in the covering of a surface with color and pattern, a weightlessness in pictorial illusion that appears to transform and jump out from two dimensions, taking up corporeal presence, seeking a constant shuttling between the isolation of static depiction and the joining with of movement. “A part is no sooner detached than it tends to reunite itself, if not to all the rest, at least to what is nearest to it. Hence, throughout the whole realm of life, a balancing between individuation and association,” as Henri Bergson once put it.
The fervent, unsettled growth of biomorphic forms and patterns evoked in Gretta Johnson’s watercolor, gouache, and pencil abstractions recall the kinetic nature of life asserting itself. With XO Tree, Rainbow Network, and Growth Study, 2018-19, for example, the seeming push of vascular systems or cellular microcosms compete in association with the macro sway and alluring pull of surreal landscapes awakening and coming to life to welcome us. In her painting Dinner Table, 2018, an event and setting familiar to all transitions into a hovering landscape, the frank scarlet monochrome background hosting an aerial presence, consumed and to be put back together piece-by-piece like the shifting nature of memory. The result is a cosmic in-between that vibrates and echoes throughout Johnson’s organic abstraction, loosely engaging such painterly conventions as the still life or landscape while rollicking into immersive graphic elsewheres that follow her own rules of gravity and invention.
Gretta Johnson (b.1985) is a Brooklyn-based artist. She received her BFA from RISD in 2008. Recent solo exhibitions include a show of new paintings at Paris London Hong Kong (Chicago) and “Jackets/ Machines/Hair” at Feuer/Mesler (New York), as well as a solo project with Lucy Bull (Los Angeles). Her work has also been recently exhibited at Rachel Uffner Gallery, Safe Gallery, and The Green River Project, among other locales. Johnson also collaborates with Grimm Artisanal Ales to design an on-going series of otherworldly labels.
